Jessica Biel shot to sexy celebrity status as the down home preacher's daughter on the
television show
"7th Heaven", then received fame for trying to get herself
thrown off the show by using a sexually explicit photo spread in the men's magazine Gear.
The then 18-year-old actress did get out of her
contract to chase a movie and acting career.

Jessica Biel was born on March 3, 1982, in Ely, Minnesota, and raised in Boulder,
Colorado.
She was first discovered at the 1996 IMTA Los Angeles Convention, which won her an
acting scholarship to Diane Hardin's Young Actors Space in Los
Angeles. Young teen print modeling and advertising work followed, and in 1996,
she
started her role as
Mary Camden on the Aaron Spelling created "7th Heaven" starring
with young teen heart-throb David
Gallagher. Biel was then hired and cast as Peter Fonda's granddaughter in Victor Nunez's rich character
study, "Ulee's Gold" (1997) about a reclusive beekeeper who slowly
pulls his dysfunctional family back together, but not without having to
fight his son's previous shameful cronies. Then Biel played Jonathan
Taylor Thomas' love interest in "I'll Be Home for Christmas"
(1998) about a college student that experiences difficulty getting home for
Christmas after being hazed by his friends.

It was clear that the actress had grown tired of playing "the good girl"
and tried to
make the producers fire her from "7th Heaven", claiming her unspoiled
image
was a reason that kept her from getting the role that went to Thora Birch in
"American Beauty" (1999). When the producers would not discharge her from her contract, Jessica posed on the cover of the March 2000
Gear
under the headline "Fallen Angel." The pictures featured her
spread topless and naked on a bed, her hands not providing enough cover in a way that pushed even Gear's
loose standards for
showing breasts. The issue become one of Gear's most popular ever, with
terrific resale value on E-bay as surfers searched for naked pictures of the
star, that finally got her fired from the show.

However, the publicity did not improve her show business career. Her first role was as a bikini wearing sexy teen in the
baseball movie "Summer Catch" (2001), a
comedy-romance about a rich girl whose family summers on Cape Cod and has a
romance with a local poor boy who hopes to become a major league baseball
player. The film did not even make a splash at the box office.

Jessica Biel has since been making guest appearances in
her original Mary Camden role, and was cast in director Roger Avary's
"The Rules of Attraction" (2002) about the spoiled and privileged students of Camden College and the backdrop for an unusual
love triangle between a drug dealer, a virgin and a bisexual classmate.

Her next roles found her and her friends chased by one of the worlds most famous killers in the
2003 remake "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and then supporting
parts "Cellular" (2004) with Kim
Basinger, about a young man who receives an emergency phone call on his
cell phone from an older woman who claims to have been
kidnapped; and the kidnappers have targeted her husband and child next.

Next up was the vampire slaying Wesley Snipes fantasy "Blade: Trinity"
(2004) that did well with keeping viewers on the edge of their seats. Next was the
adventure science fiction thriller "Stealth" (2005)
starring Jamie Foxx, about a man involved in a top-secret military
program, where three pilots struggle to bring an artificial intelligence
program under control before it initiates the next world war. Next was the
smash hit and star studded film by "Almost Famous"
director Cameron Crowe's "Elizabethtown" (2005), this was her
first chance to work with such a famous cast including Orlando
Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon and
Alec Baldwin.

In 2006, Biel went back in time to become the source of a
supernatural mystery as the ill-fated love
interest of a Vienna
magician played by Edward Norton in "The
Illusionist" (2006) .

Jessica started 2007 at a low point, as the romantic lead in the
end-of-the-world science fiction thriller "NEXT" starring Nicolas
Cage, about a Las Vegas magician who can see into the future and is hunted by FBI agents
trying to use his abilities to prevent a terrorist attack. The film failed at the box office, bringing in only
$10 million
worldwide in the first week.

Biel next tried humor, introducing her comic abilities to audiences
in the comedy "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and
Larry" (2007). The film starred Adam Sandler and Kevin James as Chuck
Levine and Larry Valentine - two straight masculine firefighters who pose as gay husbands to qualify for domestic partner
benefits. She played the romantic lead; as the attorney who represents the two men against the insurance company, with
whom Sandler falls in love.

2008 started a new era for Jessica Biel, as she began to look like a true movie star and
celebrity. She
started the year with "Hole In The Paper Sky" (2008) about a
brilliant math genius who is drawn into an unusual
friendship with a doomed laboratory dog. Next was the drama "Powder
Blue" (2008) starring Forest Whitaker, Patrick Swayze and Ray Liotta.
She then took another comedy-romance role as Larita in "Easy
Virtue" (2009), the tale of an American divorcée who meets her new
family after getting married to a young Englishman on the spur of the
moment in France.

Next was a move to animation and comedy adventure with
"Planet 51" (2009), about how the inhabitants of Planet 51 live in
fear of alien invasion. Their paranoia is realized when an astronaut arrives
from Earth. Befriended by a young resident, he has to avoid capture in order
to recover his spaceship and try to return home. Biel then was hired and cast
in the comedy "Nailed" with James Marsden and Jake
Gyllenhaal, about a small town waitress who gets a nail accidentally
lodged in her head causing unusual behavior that leads her to
Washington, DC, where sparks fly when she meets a clueless young senator who
takes up her cause.